Those conservatives, and particularly prominent conservative pundits, who have insisted upon second-guessing President Donald Trump’s recent decisions to unleash our military toward the objective of re-establishing America’s pre-eminence on the world stage utterly sicken me. It’s been well-established that Mr. Trump is not an ideological conservative, but it escapes me why even an ideological conservative would go to such lengths to criticize Trump for achieving more arguably conservative measures in 80 days than most presidents achieve in four years.

On April 6, the United States launched a military strike on a Syrian airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack that had killed dozens of civilians. Even Trump’s most vociferous liberal detractors found it difficult to criticize him for ordering the strike, given the atrocious nature and scope of Syria’s act.

On April 13, the United States launched a military strike on an ISIS target in Afghanistan, employing the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat. The mission was a marked success in that dozens of ISIS operatives were dispatched, but even more so in that no civilians were killed.

In both cases, the derisive chorus of conservative “never Trumpers” could be heard far and wide. This sort of criticism has by no means been limited to military action taken by this administration.

I can understand that the world is having a hard time adjusting to the fact that the United States is back in the game as a going concern in geopolitics. I can understand the desperate astroturf demonstrations of leftists demanding Trump release his tax returns so that they can verify his collusion with the Russians to steal the 2016 general election. What I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around is the discomfiture of conservatives, particularly influential ones, when so many of the items on their wish list are being checked off by this non-conservative president on a daily basis.

These armchair quarterbacks, who have probably never been in a schoolyard scrap (let alone a fistfight) in their lives, seem to have forgotten how low this nation was brought when Barack Hussein Obama postured us in a collective ankle grab for eight years, his serial treason and how these still threaten our well-being as a nation.

If President Trump had ordered thermonuclear devices be detonated over Damascus, Pyongyang and Tehran, I would have applauded. Obviously, this would have sent a sharp message to our enemies that we were back in the game with a vengeance, as well as decisively neutralizing three of our enemies. To those who would deem this response as horrible and beastly on my part, I would remind them of the rationale behind America having dropped two thermonuclear devices on Japan during World War II. America’s estimated cost in blood and treasure for not doing so is ostensibly what drove the decision to drop the bombs. How is this any different from the dynamic currently in play with regard to America’s enemies, particularly after the gains they made under our previous president?

I probably would not have voted for Jack Kennedy for president in 1960, but I would have been doing handsprings when he cut taxes and made Khrushchev blink over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those were the days when we could at least count on both Democratic and Republican presidents to prioritize the best interests of our nation over all else. These days, we can count on the Democrat to dramatically compromise those interests, as well as most Republicans – and that is why Trump was elected in the first place.

The concepts of transformational versus transactional leadership are often discussed in business schools and the business world. American presidents have been assessed in terms of their being either transformational or transactional leaders based upon their leadership dynamic.

Transactional presidents are typically understood as leaders who govern employing quid pro quos between themselves and their followers, or between themselves and other influential government entities, a president and Congress, for example. A transformational president would be one who identifies badly needed change, creates a vision for that change, inspires his constituency with that vision and actualizes the requisite change with his constituency (followers and other influential government entities).

Ronald Reagan is generally considered to have been a transformational president. Barack Obama has been characterized as one, although this designation is probably based more upon the hope of his inordinately zealous adherents and the establishment press than what history is likely to support.

I would submit that Donald Trump has the potential to bring into being the concept of a transcendent president, one who employs a synthesis of the above leadership styles and whose ideology, if any, transcends the existing paradigm. While Trump is clearly not a political ideologue, he has obviously acted with the best interests of this nation in mind, and that is not something we are used to seeing in a president of any stripe in quite a long time.